


And If You Love Me When I'm a Star

by indevan



Series: Rock Band AU [22]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Domestic Fluff, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-02-11 06:56:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12929913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: “Dude, I think this is us.  This is one of our songs.”Broly can hear it now.  The syncopation of the drums and the interwoven sound of guitars.  The hard thrum of the bass and the jangle of his keyboards.“It is us!” Turles exclaims.





	And If You Love Me When I'm a Star

**Author's Note:**

> [AU timeline!](http://vertigoats.tumblr.com/post/166537761367/since-after-the-first-few-the-fics-in-rock-band)

It’s cold and wet when they arrive home.  The airport is dreary and crowded and it makes Kakarrot’s head hurt.  His ears haven’t popped from the airplane because he forgot to chew gum and his shoulders ache from the weight of his backpack, suitcase, and guitar case.

Everything is bright and somehow both sharp and blurry.  He wants to rub his temples but his hands are full.

“I feel like I’m on another fucking planet,” Vegeta grumbles.  He’s squinting under the fluorescent lights of the terminal, dragging his things behind him.

Caulifla is propped against him, her hair all over her head, and she grumbles something incomprehensible.  Kale is in a similar situation, trudging forward with Broly.  They must make a sorry scene, Kakarrot thinks, stumbling through the airport like a horde of punk rock zombies in some ill-thought through Romero-ripoff from the eighties.

King Kai has blustered off, dragging both Nappa and Lapis with him, and it’s just the eight of them.  Cabba won’t stop rubbing his eyes and even Turles looks tired.  His brother is bent over with weariness and looking pissed because King Kai absconded with his boyfriend.

“You wanna split an Uber or something?” Turles asks with a yawn. “I’m too fucking tired to figure out train schedules right now.”

They’re out front now and Kakarrot isn’t sure how that happened.  Cars are moving slowly, trying to linger just long enough until a security guard comes and chases them away.

“We won’t all fit,” Caulifla points out. “‘Sides, my brother’s coming for me.”

“My parents are getting Kale and I,” Cabba says. “Thank you, though.”

He smiles up at them.

“What about you chucklefucks?” Turles asks.

Kakarrot is about to tell him that he has no idea when a horn starts honking.  He turns at the sharp, sudden sound to see Chi-Chi waving outside of the car.  The pain in his shoulder and the pounding of his head is forgotten as he rushes over to her.  His guitar case bangs against his knees in a way he’s sure to feel later but he doesn’t care.  Kakarrot drops his luggage on the sidewalk beside the car and he slides over the hood to come around and pick her up.

“Good to see you, too,” she says, laughing at his display. “The boys are in the back.”

He grins and opens the door.

“Daddy!” Gohan exclaims.

He leans in to hug him.  Goten wriggles in his carseat, waving his chubby arms at him.  He looks so big.  Three months isn’t a long time but it feels like an age.

“Hey, guys,” he says, beaming brightly. “You both got so big.”

“Look, daddy, look.” Gohan flashes a grin to show his missing tooth. “The tooth fairy left me a picture book about planets!  It’s like she knew!”

Kakarrot tosses a wink to Chi-Chi.

“She definitely did.”

“And Mr. Piccolo taught me how to do a  _ ska _ beat and if I stretch my toes I can reach the kick pedal!”

“Yeah?”

Chi-Chi comes up behind him and he feels her fingers scratch into his hair against the base of his skull.

“Dumpling, let daddy  _ put his bags in the trunk.” _ Her fingers tighten momentarily before relaxing. “And then we have to go before the man yells at us.  You can tell him more when we get home.”

“Okay!”

Kakarrot gives him a kiss and blows one to Goten who he can’t reach before cramming his bags into the trunk.  He turns back to the others and waves.

“Later!”

\--

Turles is right in that it’s easier to simply call an Uber than to try and figure out the bus and train schedule.  Broly gets in the back with Raditz and Turles rides up front with the driver.  It’s been three months and he shouldn’t be surprised that the city looks the same but he is.

Turles is the shortest out of the three of them but both he and Raditz let him have shotgun since he’s only recently out of the hospital.  He seems none the worse for wear and is back to his usual self.  He played with them for their last show, but Broly’s still worried.  He can’t shake the sickening feeling of dread that clamped over his stomach when he saw him on the floor--when he saw him loaded up into the ambulance.

Raditz isn’t saying much on the ride and Broly watches his profile.  It’s weird, looking at him from the standpoint of no longer being in love with him.  Now he appreciates that he’s handsome but it’s no longer a gnawing at his soul when he looks at him.  No, Turles has that honor now and it’s one hundred times more painful.  It hurt, when he was still reeling from being rejected, to see Raditz and Lapis together but in all the time he had liked him, the only person he had really seen him with was Turles now and again.  Turles is tailor made to be a rockstar and he spends every after party with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a beautiful, messy-haired boy in the other.  Broly  _ knows _ he’ll never reciprocate his feelings but he can’t help but feel miserable when he sees him go to bed with someone else.

“Why didn’t you ride with Lapis?” Turles asks.

“King Kai dragged him back to the studio, remember?” he replies. “Sadistic Dance still has a bunch of stuff to lay down for their EP and he just let him come see me out of the ‘good of his heart.’”

“What a guy,” Turles drawls sarcastically. “So did you two really join the mile high club on the plane ride back?”

Raditz makes a face.

“No...we couldn’t both fit in the bathroom at the same time.”

Turles laughs and Broly hunches his shoulders up around his ears.  He’s heard Turles laugh for  _ years _ but in the past few months, he’s really noticed how nice it is.  His smile, too, is charming and mischievous at the same time.  God, he hates having feelings.

He tries to tune out their conversation and listen to the music their driver is playing.  It’s the local alternative station, one Broly himself has listened to years, even though right now it’s on a traffic report.  The voice peters away and the next song starts.  There’s something familiar about the opening riff, the way the song has two guitars that sound like one.  It makes Broly think about that guitar-weaving that Kakarrot and Vegeta spent months, if not years perfecting.  The drumbeat, as well, sounds familiar but percussion instruments are one of the few that Broly hasn’t mastered so a lot of drums sound similar to him.

It’s the voices that does it.

He hears the first voice, one that sounds like Bruce Springsteen meets Mick Jagger by way of Brandon Flowers and it hits him in a flash.

“This is Vegeta,” Turles says because of course he’s the first to vocalize it.

A second voice joins in, pop melodious with a punk edge--able to sing in an upper register without it turning nasal.

“And that’s my brother,” Raditz says. “Dude, I think this is us.  This is one of our songs.”

Broly can hear it now.  The syncopation of the drums and the interwoven sound of guitars.  The hard thrum of the bass and the jangle of his keyboards.

“It is us!” Turles exclaims.

Broly feels a bit embarrassed that he didn’t recognize it.  It’s “Irregular Heartbeat,” a song written a couple years ago and one they spent hours recording for their last album.  King Kai had mentioned putting one out as a single but he didn’t know it’d be so soon or that it would be on the  _ radio. _

“This is you?” the driver asks, sounding skeptical.

“Hell yeah it is!”

Raditz has his phone out, undoubtedly furiously messaging the other two to turn on the radio.

“Kakarrot sent back like seventeen exclamation points,” he reports.  A moment later he adds, “and Vegeta says ‘fuck you for making me listen to myself.’  He’s so weird about that.”

Turles turns around.

“Didn’t his dad, like, secretly record him when he was a kid or some bonkers-ass shit?”

“Oh, right.  Oops.”

Broly tunes them out and focuses on the song.  He can hear himself, not just in playbacks.  This is him--this is all of them--on the radio.

\--

Lapis doesn’t expect Raditz to call him immediately when he gets home.  He figures he need some time to relax, decompress, but when he gets in from the studio later, he gets a call.

“Wanna get dinner?” he asks.

It’s good to hear his voice again, to have been able to see him in person.  Lapis still can’t fully believe that he feels this deeply for him.  Even just seeing him perform that night, even with the awkwardness of Turles not being there, was electric.  He noticed it on the first tour, too, how Raditz doesn’t only play drums with his hands.  It moves through his whole body.  In his chin, his neck, his shoulders, and legs.

“Sure,” he says.

He, Lazuli, and 16 were planning on getting dinner but he’s sure they’ll understand.  If Krillin called his sister up spontaneously and asked her out, she’d ditch him without question.

“I’ll pick you up.”

Lapis chuckles.

“Do you even have a car?”

Every time they’ve met each other, Raditz takes the train or Lapis goes to him and they take his car.

“Don’t worry.  I’ll pick you up.”

He can picture him winking and grinning on the other line and he nearly rolls his eyes.  Raditz can be so corny.

“Okay.  I’m already back at my place so just go there.”

“Got it.  See you in a bit.”

Lapis hangs up to see his sister looking at him with a wry smile on her face.

“Shut up,” he says to preempt her.

Lazuli holds her hands up in mock surrender but the smirk doesn’t fade.  She turns to 16.

“We’re on our own for dinner.  His boyfriend is back in town.”

16 nods and casts a soft, gentle smile towards Lapis.  16 is so much unlike them both, it’s amazing that they became friends.

“Have a good time.”

He doesn’t bother even taking his jacket off.  He goes downstairs to wait because it’s far less of a hassle for him to stand outside than for him to go through and buzz Raditz inside the building.  The night is chilly and he jams his hands in his pockets while he waits.  It isn’t late yet even though it’s already getting dark and cars rumble by.  The streets are slick, wet, and he can hear the sound of it against the tires.

A motorcycle roars up and Lapis stares in shock as it stops in front of his building.  Raditz leans down on the side and pulls his helmet off, shaking out his hair as he does.  Lapis widens his eyes and feels his mouth go dry.

“How long have you had this?” he demands. “This is so hot!”

He laughs and nervously rubs the back of his neck.

“It’s my Uncle Toma’s.  The one I told you about?  Anyway, he let me borrow it since I helped him fix it up when he got it.”

He remembers how Raditz told him about his father’s best friend who taught him to drum and how to fix motorcycles.  He didn’t know he knew how to  _ ride _ motorcycles, though.  This is a new thing to learn about his boyfriend and one that is sending a pulse straight to his groin.  Is it gauche to forgo dinner and just let him bend him over and fuck him on the back of his motorcycle?

Instead of bringing this up, he takes the helmet given to him and gets on behind him.  As they roar down the damp streets, he holds Raditz above his hips, exactly where he holds him when they’re having sex.

“Your hands are like ice,” he says over the rumble of the engine.

“It’s so the heat stays here…”

Lapis lifts his hands to press against his abdomen.  He leans on him, resting his head on his shoulder.

They come to a stop in front of a Mexican restaurant two blocks over.  It’s one he likes since they have a fair amount of vegetarian options on the menu.  Lapis hides his smile at the fact that he remembered.

“I heard your song on the radio,” Lapis says once they’re seated. “On the way to the studio.”

“We heard it, too.” Raditz shakes his head. “It’s ridiculous.  I still can’t get my head around it.”

Lapis notices that he’s wearing his jacket again, the leather one, and his hair is even more wild than usual, blown bigger by the wind.

They order margaritas and Lapis sips his when it arrives, wanting to cool down.  He can’t believe how feels like this, so turned on and hot all over.

“How’s the recording going?” Raditz asks.  He licks some salt off of the rim of his glass and it looks practically pornographic.

_ Down boy… _

“Good,” he says, keeping his voice even.

“I can’t wait to hear it.”

“Seriously?”

Raditz widens his eyes. “Totally!  You said your music was an acquired taste and I’ve acquired it.”

Lapis snorts margarita onto the table.

“You are so corny.” He picks up a napkin and cleans the small puddle on the table.

“I’m just being honest.” He gives this sort of lopsided smile.

He wonders if Raditz knows how devastating his smile can be.  Lapis can barely  _ maintain _ during dinner.

“What’s up?” Raditz asks once they’re outside. “You seem distracted.”

Lapis considers playing it cool or making an arch comment but he can’t take it.

“That stupid motorcycle made me super horny so take me home and fuck me.”

Raditz stares at him for a moment before bursting into laughter.

“You got it.”

\--

Kakarrot can’t believe how much he’s missed.  He watches Goten toddle towards him on unsure legs.  He makes it three steps before falling on his diapered backside, but Kakarrot claps for him nonetheless.

The boys are freshly bathed, Goten’s had his last bottle for the night, and they’re both all too excited to have him home.  He’s excited to  _ be _ home.

“I still can’t believe you were on the radio,” Chi-Chi says.

She’s on the couch in her pajamas, her head propped up on her hand.

“Me neither,” he agrees.

“Guess this means it’s real.” She looks down for a moment before meeting his eyes once more. “I never really thought about it until now.”

“Daddy, you sounded so good,” Gohan says with a smile. “Right, Goten?”

Goten bobs his head up and down, a string of drool hanging from his lower lip.  He’s started sounding out slight words but he’s still a good two months off from his first birthday.  The walking, though, that’s a shocker.  Gohan didn’t walk until he was thirteen months old.  He and Chi-Chi used to try and put toys further away from him so he’d go to them but he would just tug on his blanket instead to pull them closer.

“Boys, it’s time for bed.”

Gohan groans but Kakarrot gets up from his spot on the floor.

“I’ll put you to bed, GoGo.”

Chi-Chi rises from the couch and prods him in the arm.

“Sing that song you used to sing to Gohan when he was a baby.  I can never remember how it goes.”

It takes him a moment but it comes to him.  He picks Goten up in one arm and Gohan in the other and begins to walk towards their room.  He can hear the soft shift of carpet to let him know that Chi-Chi’s following him.

“How many special people change, how many lives are living strange, where were you while we were getting high?”

He sings softly and Goten’s head is already bobbing against his shoulder.  He lays him down in his crib first and Chi-Chi’s there to cover him with a blanket.  To save his arm, he shifts Gohan to where he was holding Goten and carries him to his bed.

“Slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball, where were you while we were getting high?”

He places Gohan down in bed and hands him his stuffed dragon, Icarus.  Stroking his hand over his hair, he continues to sing.

“Someday you will find me, caught beneath the landslide...in a champagne supernova in the sky…”

Gohan curls up and turns on his side, tucking Icarus under his chin.

He kisses his cheek and, quietly, he and Chi-Chi leave the room.  She closes the door with a quiet click and sighs, shaking her head.

“I can’t believe that’s the song that gets him to sleep, still,” she grumbles.

“I don’t even like Oasis,” he adds. “It was just stuck in my head one day and he really liked it.”

She gives a soft laugh and presses her head against her chest.  Kakarrot wraps his arms around her and closes his eyes, savoring the contact.  He’s still amazed that they’re good now, that they’re getting  _ married _ and, more than that, they’re working on their issues.  He tries to be less flakey, less spaced out, and Chi-Chi tries not to fly off the handle and kick him out whenever they have a disagreement.  It’s  _ working, _ too, which makes it better.

“They missed you,” she murmurs.

He strokes a hand down her back.

“Just them?” he asks, cracking a smile. “Not you?”

Chi-Chi looks at him and blinks her bangs from her eyes.

“Not at all.”

She kisses him gently, fisting her hands in his t-shirt.  Kakarrot kisses her back, savoring the taste of her.  He’s missed her.  Some of their breakups have spanned longer than three measly months but time apart when they’re good is different and video calls can only do so much.

“Feels like you missed me, too,” he says, unable to avoid ruining the moment.

Chi-Chi groans and presses her forehead against his chest.

“You always do this,” she says but her voice lacks the heat of anger.

“Guess you’ll have to punish me.”

“You’re cheesy, too.  Ugh, what a man I’ve chosen to marry.”

Kakarrot catches her around the waist. “I’m glad you did.”

“So cheesy…”

Even so, she takes his hand and starts to lead him to the bedroom.

\--

“Stop making that face.”

Bulma captures his cheeks between her palms and pooches his lips out.  Vegeta lets out a low growl and pulls them down.

“What face?” he asks irritably. “This is just how I look.”

She smirks and tips her head to the side.

“You come home after three months and you’re all pissy.” Bulma peels away from him and strokes her finger down the length of his neck. “Usually sex chills you out.”

She drums her fingers on his chest and tugs at one of his piercings lightly.  Despite his sour mood, he lets out a little grunt of pleasure.

“Tell me what’s up,” Bulma says. “Don’t close up again, okay?”

The way she says it is almost tentative, which sounds out of place for her, but Vegeta feels himself melt regardless.  Part of him still hates that effect she has on him but that part is diminishing by the day.

“Our song played on the radio today.”

It sounds pathetic, that that’s bothering him.  When he got home, Bulma and Trunks were there and they were a family and the fears that fuck with him on the daily ebbed away but.  It’s not them.  It’s him.

“Oh, really?  That’s cool.” Bulma cocks her head to the side. “Then why are you so pissed?”

“Because I had to hear myself.”

He can’t remember if he’s told her, what his dad would do.  How he would record him and Tarble when he suspected them of any wrongdoing, small or large.  He remembers hearing himself say “no, no, I didn’t eat the last of the cake.  Tarble did” and his dad pointed out how his voice wavered, how he knew he was lying.  They never got in trouble--their punishment was hearing themselves lie on tape.  It shouldn’t still bother him but a lot of things probably shouldn’t still bother him.  He probably shouldn’t still be afraid that his own fucked up failings will make him lose the family he’s managed to cobble together (Bulma, Trunks, the band, even Caulifla), but here he is.

_ Thanks, dad. _

“Oh.”

Maybe he has told her, somewhere down the line, but either way, she seems receptive to it.  Bulma rests her head against his chest and he feels his arms reflexively tighten around her.  Shit, he’s missed her.

Bulma squirms in his arms and wriggles herself up enough so she can look at him.

“Which song was it?  One about me?” She flutters her lashes and splays her hands along his collarbone.

Vegeta grunts and slips her hands down lower, to his chest.

“No.  It’s one Kakarrot and I wrote together a couple years ago.”

It’s the first one they wrote together, really, one that was truly a collaborative effort, rather than just one or the other.

“Shit.  Hey!” Bulma perks up. “If you guys do a music video, can I be in it?  I can writhe all over the car like that chick in that White Snake video.”

He doesn’t see them making one but he nods nonetheless.  She grins and relaxes against him once more.

“I’m glad you’re back,” she says. “I missed my boyfriend keeping me  _ up _ all night, practicing his guitar.”

He makes a scoffing sound through his teeth and rolls his eyes.

“How did you manage?” he asks dryly.

“I hung out with Yamcha, mostly.”

Vegeta cocks a brow.

“The singer from Kame Kami?”

She nods and flicks her finger against one of his piercings again.

“Yeah.  We used to date in high school and reconnected and--he’s a fun dude.”

“I wouldn’t know,” he says. “Everyone in that band hates us.”

Granted, there are several weeks on that tour he doesn’t remember considering how drunk he was.  Yamcha wasn’t as bad as Piccolo or Tien when it came to viscerally disliking them.

“Seriously, though.  I missed you.”

She reaches down to twine her fingers with his and brings their joined hands to her mouth.  She kisses their criss-crossing knuckles and then puts her lips on his.

“So, how about round two?” Bulma grins against his mouth.

Vegeta pulls back enough to look at her.  Hang ups and mental fuckery can wait, he decides.  At least for another night.  He separates their hands to thread his fingers through her hair.

“Of course.  We have three months to make up for.”

**Author's Note:**

> http://vertigoats.tumblr.com


End file.
